Why not? A lot of high brow musings in this thread. A tendency to over analyse will mean that there won't be a consensus regarding a worthwhile meaning of creative. Now what is the consensus of opinion on the meaning of art?

..The essence of photographic creativity, in my sense/understanding of the term, is that the photographer has put together something that did not and would not have existed without his active interference in the status quo...

Lets enlarge a bit on this statement and its implications.My very presence disturbs the status quo in the sense that what I see and what I think is a "pretty picture" is an intrusive selection of a wider vista and requires interpretation and by definition must be a creative purpose.There is absolutely nothing passive about the decision-making and creativity about landscape photography, and by extension other outdoor photography, since none of us are passive recorders of what was there.In fact photography also allows us to shoot what cannot be perceived directly - there are many examples of this but a simple example would be using long exposures to blur moving water.Let loose several individuals with cameras corralled in a small space but able to shoot whatever is around them - the likelihood of a similar image being shot is small, identical, well almost impossible. The differences would not be random and asking each photographer why they shot what they shot would immediately betray much thought and creative intent. What is more many of the rationales given would not necessarily occur to the other shooters.

The truth is that it is vanishingly rare to achieve an image of any value to anyone without a lot thought and decision-making processes. To deny that this a creative process...(Interestingly, right at the beginning of my photographic journey I did take a very striking sidelit portrait of an elephant in Hluhluwe-Umfolozi in South Africa that was a fluke in the truest sense of the word. I recognized immediately that this was a fluke, but that image remains as a catalyst for my creativity because, although I have not since returned to Africa, the desire to produce noteworthy images that incorporate my creativity and anticipation and the fickle beauty of nature has only grown.)

As in all genres, landscape photography can be art - but often isn't (or not of a quality to be recognized as art as it is generally understood).

In Rob C.'s own experience landscape photography is nothing more than being there at the right place at the right time. I can see that if he that is experience in landscape photography, that his landscape photographs probably wouldn't classify as art.

For me landscape photography is so much more than being at the right time and place. But when I would try to do the genres Rob C is good in, I would probably don't make art either...

Could it be that creating an image that didn’t previously exist, however it is created, could be...hmm...let me think for a moment...well...perhaps...creative?

Yes, if that new image exists because of how the 'artist' actually changed the status quo; as I write so often, chosing a viewpoint, for me, on its own, isn't creating anything and neither does it change anything that already existed; all that's changed is what the viewer sees, not what actually is, and the logical consequence of that would be that going to the Sphinx and shooting what is there, from a dozen angles, means you've created a dozen pictures. I don't think you've even created one in that process. Would looking at and shooting something in a miirror be considered art if the introduction of said mirror is the extent of the 'artist's' added value? I think you are (possibly mischievously?) suggesting that taking a picture is the same as creating a picture, and there lies our fundamental bone.

Regarding your comparison of your life in illustration with that in photography: only you can decide how you choose to view it; all I claim to do is state how I look at these things. I'm clearly in a tiny minority here, but that`s okay - doesn't bother me at all as, I hope, my views shouldn't bother anyone else. I only offer them becaues of the place, the circumstances and the fact that people appear happy to discuss these things and a busy LuLa is more satifying to me than a moribund one. As regards illustration and how it affected me: I can remembner being knocked out by the guys who used to illustrate the stories in Woman and Woman's Own, which my wife-to-be used to buy as a teenager. I also envied Vargas his skills. And how!

As also said before, I mean no put-downs to anyone: do and please think as you all wish, and that's perfectly fine by me: just allow me to interpret what I see in the manner that it strikes me.

I don't see any painter as being relevant to this chat: a painter starts of with a blank canvas and an idea - I trust - and then tries to give that life in a medium that takes huge skill to do it well and that's the first difference you encounter with photography: a monkey can (and probably has) do it. Hell, the friggin' camera can do it, never more so than today! And no, starting with a fresh film or card isn't the same thing at all. If you want to limit this to Cezanne and his confrères, you could be forgiven for suggesting he and they were not even particularly great artists. Their 'thing' was that they were new, and whether this was a by-product of lack of traditional skills and/or simply the timely acceptance of their styles is a moot point. Were they no more than early examples of living in the right time at the right time? Don't misunderstand me: I love Vncent, Degas, Dali, lots of artists of not so long ago. What I love is fheir interpretation, I don't claim to admire their technique as being superior to their ancestors' except in the case of Dali, that is.

Take Canaletto: his paintings of Venice often show views that are physically impossible and inaccurate. Can anyone claim that his skills are on the level of Photoshop or vice versa? The intended results may be vaguely similar, but Canaletto is incontrovertibly artist whereas the PS specialist is technician. Getting to similar positions with a programme isn't art - it's technique.

There are those of us who admire Avedon, Penn, Watson; does the same group of us honestly admire the two Richardsons? That never hindered the latter pair!

I don't see any painter as being relevant to this chat: a painter starts of with a blank canvas and an idea - I trust - and then tries to give that life in a medium that takes huge skill to do it well and that's the first difference you encounter with photography: a monkey can (and probably has) do it. Hell, the friggin' camera can do it, never more so than today!

And no, starting with a fresh film or card isn't the same thing at all. If you want to limit this to Cezanne and his confrères, you could be forgiven for suggesting he and they were not even particularly great artists. Their 'thing' was that they were new, and whether this was a by-product of lack of traditional skills and/or simply the timely acceptance of their styles is a moot point. Were they no more than early examples of living in the right time at the right time? Don't misunderstand me: I love Vncent, Degas, Dali, lots of artists of not so long ago. What I love is fheir interpretation, I don't claim to admire their technique as being superior to their ancestors' except in the case of Dali, that is.

Take Canaletto: his paintings of Venice often show views that are physically impossible and inaccurate. Can anyone claim that his skills are on the level of Photoshop or vice versa? The intended results may be vaguely similar, but Canaletto is incontrovertibly artist whereas the PS specialist is technician. Getting to similar positions with a programme isn't art - it's technique.

There are those of us who admire Avedon, Penn, Watson; does the same group of us honestly admire the two Richardsons? That never hindered the latter pair!

The essence of photographic creativity, in my sense/understanding of the term, is that the photographer has put together something that did not and would not have existed without his active interference in the status quo.

If we push to an extreme, there seems something a little strange about that as a criterion -- the difference between a photograph of a tulip in a florist's and a photograph of a tulip outside the florist's after purchase; the difference between a Morning Glory flower on the vine and a Morning Glory flower on a wire support.

"He told us we were charming, and asked if we could [kiss] again for the camera," ... "Monsieur Doisneau took us to three different places for the picture," ... First he took some pictures on the Place de la Concorde, then on the Rue de Rivoli, and finally the Hôtel de Ville."

Presumably, if Robert Doisneau had photographed the first un-posed kiss that would not show photographic creativity -- but the second, third and fourth sets of photos would?

This is a straight shot of an existing subject from my 'Found Paintings' series. As a painter I have the skills to capture it in a number of media, from the photograph or directly from the subject, but what would be the point? As far as I'm concerned the creativity was in the selection.

I've never made a distinction between various media when creating an image. The medium isn't the message.

If we push to an extreme, there seems something a little strange about that as a criterion -- the difference between a photograph of a tulip in a florist's and a photograph of a tulip outside the florist's after purchase; the difference between a Morning Glory flower on the vine and a Morning Glory flower on a wire support.

"He told us we were charming, and asked if we could [kiss] again for the camera," ... "Monsieur Doisneau took us to three different places for the picture," ... First he took some pictures on the Place de la Concorde, then on the Rue de Rivoli, and finally the Hôtel de Ville."Presumably, if Robert Doisneau had photographed the first un-posed kiss that would not show photographic creativity -- but the second, third and fourth sets of photos would?

There was a documentary shown here just recently about Gregory Crewdson. He would be right up your alley then, Rob. He looks upon the photographic process as a kind of movie-story-telling without the burden of finishing the entire plot by character development and whatever. He creates a single (defining?) picture from a non-existing movie and the entire image is completely and totally staged, and where necessary digitally manipulated to boot. It was interesting to see, and he did indeed look more like a movie-director then a photographer. In fact, I don't think he actually even touched the camera.

The essence of photographic creativity, in my sense/understanding of the term, is that the photographer has put together something that did not and would not have existed without his active interference in the status quo. That's why I can't accept the simple act of picking a pleasing viewpoint or moment in time as being the defining qualities of creativity; it takes more than that: the photographer has to have made the difference.

So, you are basically saying that rearranging a few apples and pears, or peppers, or whatever, on a tabletop is creative, wheres the whole HCB opus (of capturing a decisive moment in time) is not? Or that Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl, another example of just picking a "pleasing viewpoint or moment in time," is not?

If that is indeed creativity, then I do not really care much about it anymore.

I think that the essence of our different views on art/creativity is that you see Art = Object. It starts with objects (peppers or models), rearranged by the photographer, and ends as an object in itself. The viewer then can admire that (newly created) object, and the original objects in it... or not.

If, however, we assume that Art = Communication (as Oscar already mentioned), then the origin of that communication (the initial object) becomes much less important, and even less important whether that object was rearranged or "merely" selected.

In such a case, simply selecting a can of soup becomes art. Or even elephant turd. In both cases it initiates a communication with the viewer. And that is the bases of much of modern art, as much as I acknowledge that many people wouldn't consider it so.

In such a case, simply selecting a "pleasing viewpoint or moment of time" in landscape photography is not an end in and by itself (an object), but a beginning of a communication with the viewer, conveying a certain emotion or state of mind. Hence Art.

While this is all very entertaining it is almost useless banter for those that make Art.There is nothing new under the sun, but that is not the point. It's the artist's interpretation what makes it art , never the subject.